Kansas Historical Notes - February 1937

Judge Otis E. Hungate was elected president of the Shawnee County Old Settlers' Association at a meeting held in Topeka, December 5, 1936. Other officers elected were: Frank Washburn, vice-president, and Alice Meade, secretary. William A. Biby was the principal speaker of the session.

A History of Anderson County, Kansas, written by Harry Johnson and published by the Garnett Review, was issued late in December, 1936. Mr. Johnson spent several years in research, and during the past few years as a result of these investigations, numerous historical articles have appeared in Garnett newspapers under his signature. This new addition to Kansas county history shows thorough familiarity with the subject, and the quality of printing produced by the publisher maintains a high standard. Included in the six-section 383-page book are: A resume of two former histories of the county's early settlement; news briefs from newspaper files, 1867 to 1933; stories of the settlement, industries and natural resources of the county; historical sketches of the district schools; pioneer and other reminiscences, and histories of the county's present and "ghost" towns.

One of the best Kansas books of recent years is People of Kansas, a Kansas State Planning Board publication of 1936, written and compiled under the direction of Carroll D. Clark and Roy L. Rob

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erts. The book makes the population factor the central interest, and is concerned primarily with the growth, sources, distribution, composition, shiftings, and adjustments of the Kansas inhabitants. William Allen White wrote in the foreword: "This book . . . is a most interesting study. It has been carefully done-a scholarly work. More than any other book I have read, this book explains why Kansas is Kansas; why it is not, for instance, Oklahoma, and not Nebraska, certainly not Missouri nor Colorado."

A fascinating story of family life on the Kansas plains in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was told by Dr. John Ise, of Lawrence, in his recent book Sod and Stubble, published by WilsonErickson, Inc., of New York City. The author sets forth with sincere regard the heroic part played by a pioneer woman-his mother-who at the age of seventeen married a young German farmer and moved to a homestead in north central Kansas, where she reared eleven of her twelve children, and, remembering regretfully her own half-day in school, sent nine of them through college.

Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains

The latest in scholarship on Kansas history, published quarterly since 1978 by the Kansas Historical Foundation.